Jack, Knave and Fool

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Because I have taken it upon myself to write of Sir John Fielding’s feats of detection and of the most notorious matters which came before him as Magistrate of the Bow Street Court, I fear that the picture I have presented of him and his little household is somewhat unbalanced at best and most crudely distorted at worst. Each time I have taken up my pen, I have drawn a portrait of the man in crisis, so to speak, obsessed as he could indeed become with the solving of some puzzle and the apprehension of some malefactor. It was not always so. Indeed, through the years that I spent in the warmth of his association, Sir John was quite generally of an even and pleasant temper, a just and gentle ruler of his household.

Of the time I write, early in the year 1771, that household did consist of four: he, the master; his mistress, Lady Fielding; the widow Katherine Durham, whom he had taken as his second wife; Annie Oakum, our most capable cook, who had then just turned sixteen years of age; and I, Jeremy Proctor, a few months younger, Sir John’s “man Friday,” or so he called me, a fellow of all work — porter and house cleaner for Lady Fielding, and for Sir John scribe, reader, runner of every sort of errand, and whenever needed, a ready pair of eyes. (It must be remembered, reader, that all of his remarkable accomplishments were made more remarkable still by the fact that he was blind.) We two younger members of the household were treated as near like the children of Sir John and Lady Fielding as ever any could be. True, we had our duties, but so also do the children of any proper family. Yet we sat at table with the elders not only in our quotidian routine, in the kitchen, but also when guests did attend in our modest dining room.

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